A Vision upon the Fairy Queen

By Sir Walter Ralegh 1552–1618 Sir Walter Ralegh

Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,

Within that temple where the vestal flame

Was wont to burn; and, passing by that way,

To see that buried dust of living fame,

Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept:

All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen;

At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept,

And, from thenceforth, those Graces were not seen:

For they this queen attended; in whose stead

Oblivion laid him down on Laura’s hearse:

Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,

And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:

Where Homer’s spright did tremble all for grief,

And cursed the access of that celestial thief!

Biography

Before his execution for treason, Sir Walter Ralegh won fame as an explorer of the New World — both for voyages to Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina (whose capital is named after him), and to Venezuela in search of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold. Also a scholar and a gifted lyric poet, Ralegh brought glory to Elizabethan England along with the potatoes and tobacco he is said to have introduced there.

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